There is a need for soldiers in the field to have an effective means of communication with their peers in the immediate neighborhood. While such communication can sometimes be done verbally or with hand signals, it is increasingly being done with radios. Such radios need to be light, free of cabling that could encumber the soldier, and consume little power to minimize the battery requirements, both in terms of weight and battery life.
Prior art systems require the use of a headset and separate radio interconnected by a cable or series of cables. Such systems are cumbersome and may interfere with the soldier's ability to operate other equipment.
Such systems often require the soldier to manually disconnect the headset from the radio and plug the headset into a vehicle intercom system when transitioning from dismounted to vehicle-based operations. They must also be hard-wired to other sensors (for example position reporting devices) in order to communicate sensor data over the network.